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Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens Quotes

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Famous Christopher Hitchens Quotes

“The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.”

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Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.”

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Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.”

KnowsHeartSelfBodyRunningDiesFatherWishRealizingGrowingAtheismTerribleLessonsProtectDaughterCalmAtheistLimitationPhrasesFrightenedFatherhoodEvokeBeing A DadSerfsYeatsThoughts Of Death
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“The prince's official job description as king will be 'defender of the faith,' which currently means the state-financed absurdity of the Anglican Church, but he has more than once said publicly that he wants to be anointed as defender of all faiths—another indication of the amazing conceit he has developed in six decades of performing the only job allowed him by the hereditary principle: that of waiting for his mother to expire.”

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Book:Arguably
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“Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”

PeopleKnowsWayBelieveFactsBeliefPrinciplesRaisesConvictionCertaintyBehaveAwardsEthicalThinkerPermissionEyebrowsKeepersBrothelsGod Is Not Great
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.”

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Book:Mortality
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“People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.”

PeopleIfsThinkingDoeReasonProblemRaceStupidVoteIntelligentCastsObviousGenderFavorsIdenticalTokensStupid ThingsClansIdentity Politics
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?”

MeanWarFoundForceJusticeEffortHugeHolyCourtPatientCongressSupremeCompromiseEmpoweringDepartmentPalestinianSecularDocumentsOffenseSupreme CourtFoundingFrustratingFlexibleIsraeliFinancingPrincipledHoly War
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.”

NeedsMindHumansLawBeliefForceSacrificeAtheismOffersLimitsWeaponsClaimsAtheistPursuitInevitableHuman LifeCourageousIronicFearfulInvestigationCultLaws Of NaturePatheticOpen MindLiteralMindlessWailingAdulationInevitable Death
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.”

IfsThinkingFeelsMindAtheismMissingAtheistConvictionRadicalGuaranteesFeel BetterLimbsGod Is Not Great
Book:Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume
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“I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.”

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Book:Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays
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